He had returned from London only just in time to dress for dinner, and so he had not seen his guests till just before a quarter-past eight. Then had followed an hour passed, outwardly at least, peacefully and pleasantly. But while he had been eating mechanically the food put before him, in very truth not knowing what it was, terrible thoughts had gone through his mind in a terrible sequence. Once or twice he had caught, or thought he had caught, Oliver Tropenell's penetrating eyes fixed searchingly on his face, but he, the host, had avoided looking at his guest. Somehow he could neither look at Oliver, nor even think of Oliver--with Oliver and Laura there, the one sitting opposite to him, the other next him. Laura? Laura, on Lord St. Amant's left, had looked lovely last night. She was wearing a white dress, almost bridal in its dead whiteness--a rather singular fact considering that she had till to-day worn unrelieved black. Looking back, her host could not get her out of his mind. To think that she, proud, reserved, Laura Pavely was to be the heroine of a frightful tragedy which would bring not only shame and disgrace on herself and on the man whom Lord St. Amant had every reason to suppose she now loved, but--what was of so very much more concern to him--on that man's mother. Looking at Laura, seeing that strange, haunting Mona Lisa smile on her lovely face, it had seemed incredible that she should be the central figure of such a story. But how could she escape being the central figure, the heroine of the story, at any rate in the imagination of all those, one might almost count them by millions, rather than thousands, who in a few days or a few weeks would be as familiar with the name "Mrs. Pavely" as they once had been with the names of--of Mrs. Bravo and Mrs. Maybrick? Yes, Lord St. Amant, staring into the fire, told himself, that that three-quarters of an hour spent in his own dining-room had been the most painful time he had ever lived through in his long life. He felt as if every moment of it was indelibly stamped on his brain. And yet he had completely forgotten what the talk had been about! He supposed they had talked. Silence would have seemed so strange, so unnatural. Yet he could not remember a single thing which had been said. But his vision of the three who had sat at table with him remained horribly clear. Now he was haunted specially by Oliver. And then, after a while, Oliver left him, and he was haunted by his poor friend, soon to be his poor wife. Mrs. Tropenell had been more silent than usual--so much he did remember. And he wondered uneasily if he had given her any cause for thinking, from his appearance or his manner, that there was anything wrong? The thought of what was going to happen to Mrs. Tropenell on the day which was now to-morrow, became suddenly so intolerable to Lord St. Amant that he got up from his chair, and walked twice round the large, shadowed bedroom.